1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile IP (Internet Protocol) agent and, more particularly, to a transparent mobile IPv6 agent being adapted to various operating systems and network connection devices.
2. Description of Related Art
Because the communication of Internet is getting popular, related protocols are continuously developed in recent years. For example, (1) a new Internet communication protocol IPv6 has been proposed in 1995 for solving the problems of lack of internet address in the existing IPv4 as well as increasing mobility, improving service quality of multimedia, and effectively supporting transmission security; (2) IP mobility support communication protocol (IPv4 version) (IETF RFC 2002 IP Mobility Support) was proposed in 1996 for enabling a mobile node to continue communication with other network nodes without changing the IP address and interrupting some applications even though the mobile node has changed the link points in link layer of the Internet; and (3) IP mobility support communication protocol (IPv6 version) draft has been updated to the 14th edition (i.e., draft-ietf-mobileip-ipv6-14.txt). Although the IP mobility support communication protocol (IPv6 version), as a basis for developing a mobile IPv6 agent system, is still in a drafting stage, the manufacturers and/or researchers have proposed a number of solutions to existing problems due to a strong requirement of the mobile communication. However, each solution has some drawbacks and difficulties in system integration as detailed below.                (1) A mobile IPv6 agent system developed in one operating system is not easy to transfer to another operating system because:                    (1.1) Different operating systems have their distinct adapting interfaces for communicating with the network access layer and various access devices;            (1.2) Different operating systems have different implementations with respect to communication in nodes between various network layers in despite of having a standard socket linking mechanism between the nodes; and            (1.3) Different operating systems have different designs in their kernel layers.                        (2) It is not easy to integrate a mobile IPv6 agent system developed in one organization into the Internet layer communication system developed in another organization. This is because the interactive mechanisms of the mobile IPv6 agent system and the Internet layer communication system developed by different organizations are not the same.        (3) Mobile IPv6 agent systems developed from IPv6 mobility support communication protocol of different editions are implemented in different manners by various organizations. Therefore, a latter edition of mobile IPv6 agent system may not use the repeated portion of the former edition, so that the former and latter editions are not easily compatible.        
Therefore, a novel transparent mobile IPv6 agent system is desirable. Such a system is modular to be adapted to different operating systems and network connection devices in order to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.